REFORM DRUG LAWS

To The Editor:

New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said he wants to move
quickly to reform the harrowing Rockefeller drug laws. Alleviate the
mandatory minimums that now send possessors of small amounts of drugs to
jail for 15 years or more. "I believe the drug war is a new form of Jim
Crow, warehousing black young adults in prison or on probation." ( Wed, 08
Nov 2000).

We have reached the point where drug laws are destroying families not drug
use. 650% increase in female prisoners in two decades. 70% of them have at
least one child under 18. 85.1% of female jail inmates are behind bars for
nonviolent offenses. 72% of women in federal prisons and 34% of women in
state prisons are incarcerated on drug-related charges. Of those, 65% are
first time drug offenders that received five to ten years without parole
under mandatory minimum sentencing. Many of the mandatory minimum
convictions are for conspiracy. "Conspiracy" charge means no drugs were
found on or under the control of the person. For the last decade, the
number of people entering prisons for drug offenses has surpassed the
number entering for violent crimes.

Sources: Village Voice, New York, NY Time 6 Nov. 2000 pg. 107,108 John
Irwin, Ph. D., Vincent Schiraldi, and Jason Ziedenberg, America's One
Million Nonviolent Prisoners (Washington, DC Justice Policy Institute,
March 1999), pgs. 6-7. Greenfield, Lawrence A., and Snell, Tracy L., US
Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Women Offenders
(Washington, DC US Department of Justice, December 1999), p. 6, Table 15.
Minneapolis Star Tribune, Sept 30, 2000, Federal Prison Camp for Women in
Pekin, Illinois

Larry Seguin Lisbon, New York